Dr. Laura Chapman:

I certainly will. I have made a brief list because it is important to consider where we could improve as part of the committee's considerations. The first thing I think should be revised is that our legislation allows a postgraduate year 3 doctor to be the deliverer of assisted dying. That does not happen in most other places. I think a certain level of experience and qualification should be required. It should fall to people who are vocationally registered, which means they have completed specialist training, which would mean they would probably have at least eight years' experience, and more than likely more than ten years' experience. I do not think there is sufficient seniority and qualification in the level of providers within our legislation. I think most senior providers agree with me there.

As I said before, our legislation rightly focused on patient safety but not enough on excellent patient care and clinical governance. That should have been built into the legislation or the processing. We do not have a clinical lead as we have for most services. Our service is run nationally but there is no clinical lead, which is an omission. Clinical leads take clinical responsibility, govern their colleagues and enable things such as reviews of processes, reviews of patients who have declined and why, reviews of why patients are approved for the treatment but do not go through with it and reviews of patients who go through with it and what could have been done better. That is a normal part of clinical services that has been omitted and needs to be brought in.

I also think that there is not enough discussion. Our opinions are set up as two separate and independent opinions and although that brings good safeguarding, it is not normal medical practice and does not allow us to learn from each other. For instance, I have been a second doctor and turned down a patient that the first doctor has approved but I do not have permission to speak to that doctor to explain why I disagreed with him or her. I can speak to the patient, which is obviously the most important thing, but from the point of view of learning from a service, it is important that I can speak to the first doctor and explain why I disagreed. That is a more collegial and learning way to approach the issue. Those would be the first things I would like to revise.